Just over a week before the steamy “Fifty Shades of Grey” movie opens on Valentine’s weekend, controversial founding pastor of the popular Fellowship Church in Dallas, Texas, Ed Young, says he will baptize copies of the book on which the movie is based, calling it a “perverted attempt to trap readers.”

“There is a cultural epidemic out there that is wrapped up in complete fantasy. The book, Fifty Shades of Grey, is a perverted attempt to trap readers and leads them to a misunderstanding of what intimacy and connection are all about,” said Young in a press statement Wednesday.

On the one hand I’m glad that Ed Young is speaking out on the problem with Fifty Shades of Grey; but on the other hand I wonder if the early Biblical church would have done what Ed Young is planning to do at his church?

It seems that the closest parallel in Scripture of Christians responding to bad corrupt writing is in Acts 19:19-20:

A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas.[c]20 In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.

Far from baptizing “books!” When these believers repented they got rid of those writings by burning them. But don’t take this passage out of context to start random book burnings either since the context of Acts 19:19-20 is that they repented from their sins and then they got rid of their own books; it is not a verse to encourage burning other people’s book nor does it encourage buying those books for the purpose of burning them.

But I want to say a word about “baptizing” Fifty Shades of Grey. In one sense some may be doing without realizing it; I mean figuratively of course. They will go out to see this movie and they will sprinkle some Christian-ese to justify it. Or they think that Christ have died for their sins allowing them to watch it anyways and use grace as a license for sin.

I hope my play on “Baptism” wasn’t too confusing.
Personally I find it the main confusion starts with Ed Young’s baptism of the book; we baptize people not things, we get rid of ungodly things that stumble us not pour water on them.